Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
33.
The inspired prophecies of Jeremiah and Zephaniah about Christ and the calling of the Gentiles
Jeremiah is one of the major prophets, like Isaiah, not one of the minor prophets, like the others from whose writing I have quoted a number of passages. Now Jeremiah prophesied in the reign of Josiah in Jerusalem, when Ancus Martius was on the Roman throne, and when the captivity of the Jews was already imminent. His prophetic activity extended until the fifth month of the captivity, as we discover from his writings. Zephaniah, one of the minor prophets, is linked with him, in that he himself tells us that he prophesied in the time of Josiah, though he does not say for how long. Jeremiah then, prophesied not only in the time of Ancus Martius, but also in that of Tarquinius Priscus, whom the Romans had for their fifth king. For he had already begun his reign when the captivity came about
In a prophecy of Christ, Jeremiah says, ‘The breath of our nostrils, Christ the Lord, has been taken captive in our sins’,
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thus showing, in this brief statement, that Christ is our Lord, and that he suffered for us. Again, in another place he says, ‘This is my God and no other will be compared with him. He discovered the whole way of knowledge and entrusted it to Jacob his servant and Israel his beloved; after this he was seen on earth and lived among men.’
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Some authorities attribute this testimony not to Jeremiah but to his scribe, who was called Baruch; but it is more generally held to be the work of Jeremiah.
Again, the same prophet says about Christ, ‘See, the time is coming, says the Lord, when I shall raise up for David a righteous scion, who will reign as king, and will be wise, and will execute justice and righteousness on the earth. In those days Judah will be saved, and Israel dwell in confidence: and this is the name by which he will be called: “Our Righteous Lord”.’
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He spoke also about the calling of the Gentiles, which was then destined to happen and which we now see accomplished. He says, ‘O Lord, my God, and my refuge in the day of disaster, to you the nations will come from the farthest part of the earth, saying: “It is true that our fathers worshipped delusive images, and in them there is no value.” ’
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But the same prophet signifies that the Jews by whom he was destined to be killed would not recognize him; for he says, ‘The heart is heavy in every way; and he is the man, and who recognizes him?’
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This prophet is also the author of the passage I quoted in Book XVII,
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concerning the new covenant, whose mediator is Christ. For, as we know, it is Jeremiah who says, ‘See, the days are coming when I will ratify a new covenant for the house of Jacob’, and the rest of the passage to be found there.
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At this point I shall put in the prophecies of Christ made by Zephaniah, a prophet contemporary with Jeremiah. They are as follows: ‘Wait for me, says the Lord, in the day of my resurrection in the future. For it is my decision to assemble the nations and gather together the kingdoms.’
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And again, ‘The Lord will be full of terror for them, and he will abolish all the gods of the earth, and every man will worship him, each in his own place, all the islands of the nations.’
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And a little later,
At that time I shall change the language for the peoples and his posterity, so that all may call on the name of the Lord and serve him under one yoke; from the boundaries of the rivers of Ethiopia they will bring sacrifices to me. On that day you will feel no shame for all the misdeeds which you have wickedly practised against me; for I shall then take away from you the vile acts of your injustice; and you will no longer seek to make much of yourselves on my holy mountain. And I shall leave in your midst a gentle and humble people; and the remnant of Israel will reverence the name of the Lord.
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This is the remnant about which there is a prophecy elsewhere,
quoted by the Apostle, ‘Even if the number of the sons of Israel should be like the sands of the sea, only a remnant will be saved.’
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This remnant is, of course, those of that race who have believed in Christ.
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The prophecies of Daniel and Ezekiel which harmonize with Christ and the Church
Then again, during the actual period of the Babylonian captivity there were two other major prophets, Daniel and Ezekiel. They prophesied in the earlier part of the exile. Of these Daniel specified the time when Christ was destined to come and to suffer, by giving the number of years that were to intervene. It would be a tedious business to demonstrate this by computation, and it has been done by others before us. But Daniel has this to say on the power of Christ and on his Church,
I saw a vision of the night, and behold, there was one coming with the clouds of heaven like a son of man; and he came to the ancient of days and was brought forward in his presence. And to him was given sovereignty, honour and kingship; and all peoples, tribes, and languages will serve him. His power is an eternal power which will not pass away, and his kingdom will not be destroyed.
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Ezekiel also points to Christ, in the prophetic manner, by presenting him in the person of David, because he took flesh from the line of David – and because of this ‘form of a servant’,
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in which he was made man, he is called the servant of God as well as God’s son. This is Ezekiel’s prediction of him, in which the prophet speaks in the role of God the Father: ‘I shall raise up one shepherd, my servant David, to be in charge of my flocks, to pasture them. He will pasture them and be their shepherd; while I, the Lord, shall be their God, and my servant David will be ruler among them. I, the Lord, have spoken.’
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In another place he says,
There will be one king ruling over them: and there will no longer be two nations, and they will no more be divided into two kingdoms; nor will they any longer be defiled with their idols and their abominations and all their sins. And I shall save them out of all their dwellings in which they have sinned, and I shall cleanse them. And they will be my people, and I shall be their God. And my servant David will be king over them, and will be the one shepherd of them all.
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The predictions of the three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi
There remain three minor prophets who prophesied at the end of the captivity. These are Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Of these, Haggai gives the clearest prophecy of Christ and the Church, in this brief statement: ‘This is what the Lord of Hosts says: “A little while now, and I shall shake the heaven and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I shall shake all nations; and then will come one who is longed for by all nations.”’
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We observe the partial fulfilment of this prophecy; we await its completion at the end of history. For he shook the heavens by the testimony of the angels and the stars when Christ became incarnate; he shook the earth by the momentous miracle involved in the virgin birth; he has shaken the sea and the dry land now that Christ is being proclaimed both in the islands and in the whole world. Thus we see that all nations are being shaken, and stirred to faith in Christ. But as soon as we come to the next statement, ‘then will come one who is longed for by all nations’, we have something which is still awaited, which concerns his last coming. For he had first to be loved by those who believe, so that he might be longed for by those who look for his appearance.
Zechariah says of Christ and the Church, ‘Rejoice greatly, daughter of Sion! Shout for joy, daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king is coming to you, a righteous king and a saviour. He comes as a poor man, mounted on a donkey, on a colt, a donkey’s foal. His power will extend from sea to sea, and from the rivers as far as the ends of the earth.’
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We read in the Gospel of the fulfilment of this prophecy, when the Lord Christ on his journey made use of a beast of burden of this kind; and part of this prophecy is quoted there, as much of it as seemed sufficient in the context.
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In another place the prophet addresses Christ in the spirit of prophecy, speaking about the forgiveness of sins through his blood. Here he says, ‘You also, by the blood of your covenant, have rescued your prisoners from the lake in which there is no water.’
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The question of what he meant to be understood by ‘the lake’ is capable of a diversity of answers. But in my opinion there is no better meaning to be put to it than that of the depths of human misery, dry, as we may call it, and sterile, where there are no streams of righteousness but only the mud of iniquity.
There is, to be sure, a similar reference in one of the psalms, ‘He has led me out of the lake of misery, and out of the muddy clay.’
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Malachi gives a prophecy of the Church which we see propagated through Christ’s action, when, as the mouthpiece of God, he speaks to the Jews in the most explicit terms, saying,
I am not pleased with you, and I shall not accept an offering from your hands. For from the farthest east to the farthest west my name is honoured among the nations, and in every place sacrifice will be offered and a pure oblation; because my name is honoured among the nations, says the Lord.
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This sacrifice we now see being offered to God everywhere, through Christ’s priesthood in the line of Melchizedech, from farthest east to farthest west; furthermore, the Jews, who were told ‘I am not pleased with you and I shall not accept an offering from your hands’, cannot deny that their sacrifices have ceased. This being so, why do the Jews still await another Christ? And they do this in spite of the fact that this prophecy, which they read, and which they see fulfilled, has in the person of Christ himself received its only possible fulfilment.
Then, a little later, Malachi speaks as the mouthpiece of God, and says,
My covenant with him was a covenant of life and peace, and I granted him that he should truly fear me and stand in reverence before my name. The Law of truth was in his mouth, and guiding himself in peace he walked with me, and he converted many from wickedness; because the priest’s lips will safeguard knowledge, and they will seek the Law from his mouth, since he is the angel of God Almighty.
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We should not be surprised that Christ Jesus is spoken of as the ‘angel’ of God Almighty; for just as he is called a ‘servant’ because of the ‘form of a servant’ in which he came to mankind, so he is called an ‘angel’ on account of the gospel which he announced to mankind. For if we translate the Greek words, ‘gospel’ means ‘good news’ and ‘angel’ means ‘messenger.’ Indeed, Malachi speaks of Christ in yet another place in these words:
Look, I am going to send my messenger, and he will survey the road in front of me; and the Lord you are looking for will suddenly come into his temple, and the angel of the covenant whom you wish for. See, he is
coming, says the Lord Almighty; and who will withstand the day of his coming in? And who will stand up to face his gaze?
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In this passage he predicts both the first and the second coming of Christ: the first, obviously, when he says, ‘He will suddenly come into his temple’, that is, into his physical body, to which he referred in the Gospel when he said, ‘Destroy this temple, and I shall raise it up again in three days’:
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and the second in saying, ‘See, he is coming, says the Lord Almighty; and who will withstand the day of his coming in? And who will stand up to face his gaze?’ While as for the words ‘the Lord you are looking for, and the angel of the covenant, whom you wish for’, the prophet here undoubtedly indicates that even the Jews look for and wish for Christ – the Messiah – in accordance with the Scriptures which they read. But many of them have not recognized that he whom they looked for and wished for has come, because they are blinded in their hearts by their previous merits.
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The prophet is emphatic in his reference to a ‘covenant.’ He says above, ‘My covenant was with him’, and again, in this passage, he calls Christ ‘the angel of the covenant.’ Now we must undoubtedly take this to be the new covenant, in which eternal blessings are promised, not the old covenant which offered merely temporal rewards. Now the majority of mankind put a high value on such goods, and in their weakness they serve the true God for the sake of such temporal recompense; and so they are upset when they see the irreligious enjoying them in abundance. It is for this reason that the prophet is concerned to distinguish the eternal blessedness of the new covenant, which will be bestowed only on the good, from the worldly felicity of the old, which is often granted to the wicked also; and with that aim in view he says,
You have spoken harsh words about me, says the Lord. You ask: ‘What have we said in your disparagement?’ You have said: ‘Anyone who serves God is wasting his time. What good have we got from observing his instructions, and from walking as suppliants before the face of Almighty God? And now we call the aliens happy, and all the evil-doers are restored; they have opposed God, and yet they have been preserved.’ Such were the reproaches uttered by those who feared the Lord, each one to his neighbour. And the Lord noticed it and listened; and he wrote a book of remembrance in his presence for those who fear the Lord and reverence his name.
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